The Support for Different Democracy Models by the Use of a Web-Based Discussion Board

Different initiatives are initiated to utilize ICT to maintain and develop democracy. Democracy models are developed to explain differences between different democracies. This paper reports from a case study where a web-based discussion board is developed and implemented. The findings indicate that politicians and citizens add support to different democracy models by their contributions to the web-based discussion board. Contributions from the citizens add stronger support for the neo-republican model where as politicians mainly support the demo-elitist model. These differences might become obstacles to the utilization of the technology. Identifying potential differences early on in a project may increase the opportunity to develop services capable of handling requests from different stakeholders.